In England we’re all snowed in. Which is great inasmuch as it means that the news organisatons from the BBC, ITN, all the way down to the Metro, Sun, Mirror etc are deflected away from doing their best to tell us the world is ending and the economy is melting down into some sort of toxic credit puddle.

I used to work in news, my first ever job was on BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat, and I lasted a week before I quit. News is horrible, it is quite literally full of people taking savage joy from finding the most miserable examples of human existence all over the world and presenting it as if it’s a good thing we all need to know.

So while I was happy the snow stopped the continual doom and gloom from the misery makers, I was genuinely fed up to realise it only took one day for them to get back on course with a story about some poor kid who died in a sledging accident.

Why does this tragedy have to be the most important thing we learn about when we wake up??? It’s crazy. Really, genuinely mad.

News should be optional. Imagine a world without news, would we really suffer? We could just have nice magazines about things, not foul angry messages of murder and mutilation from the four corners of the world with our cup of morning tea.

Of course we need to keep an eye on the interest rates and who is being elected for things that affect our day to day lives, but that’s enough. Why does a family tragedy warrant being shoved down our throats.

Of course some of us MIGHT be interested in the fact that somebody has murdered someone thousands of miles away – or that a plane has crashed, or the outlook is gloomy and we’re all going to be miserable. But why not just give us the choice?